Peter Moore says increasing “approachability” is the name of the game at EA Sports, because too many of its current titles are “too fricking hard to play.”
Speaking to IGN, Moore said people entering the industry with no previous experience with sports games could help overcome the steep learning curve awaiting players new to the genre. EA Sports recently unveiled a new line of All-Play titles designed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii, aimed at making the company’s top franchises more accessible to gamers of all skill levels.
The development teams on the Wii games are completely separate from those working on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions, Moore said, and then added that all EA Sports franchises, including non-Wii releases, could be reworked to open them up to a wider audience. “With the 360 and PS3 versions, the real movement you’re going to see there is about approachability,” Moore said. “Not dumbing it down – but stuff that feels more adaptive, helping you get through the game. Our games have been too hard – and even hardcore gamers will tell us at times it’s just too fricking hard to play a game without having to revert back to the manual to find out what to do. We need to change that.”
“We need to continue to bring people into the industry that are playing games for the first time – and not just with the Wii, but also with the PS3 and with the 360 as well,” he continued. “For example, if I’m playing Madden with my son, it’s going to know that I’m not very good at Madden, and it will adapt and will put me through the holographic training system and will figure where I am. My son has been playing Madden for 15 years, so he’ll do it and it will immediately say, you know what, you’re fine, just go play. He won’t need the help that I will need. But we don’t dumb the game down for everybody, something which we’re very, very careful about.”
The All-Play games are also being marketed differently than standard EA Sports titles, Moore said, right down to differences in packaging for the games. “If you look at the PS3 version there’s a very intense picture of Brett [Favre] throwing a football, whereas in the Wii version he’s actually laughing – and I’ve seen him play for 20 years and that’s who he is,” Moore said. “But all the athletes have a different photograph on the Wii which is meant to really deliver a different message rather than simply [being] about intense gameplay and authenticity and the simulation of the real game, it’s about having fun.”
